In 1983 Bill and Pat along with the Smith’s, Ed, Susie, and Krista undertook a houseboat trip to Lake Powell.  We had no idea what an adventure it would be.

     The plan was to go in October for moderate weather.  We rented a ski boat in Huntington Beach and planned to tow it to Lake Powell.  We elected to use Ed’s company car for the tow.  We had a hitch and those balloon shocks added to carry the load.

     Half way to Barstow the shocks gave out.  We made it to Barstow practically dragging the tongue of the trailer.  We replaced the balloon shocks with good air rides.  As we proceeded into the mountains it became obvious that our vehicle was underpowered for the trip.  It overheated on any significant grade.  Nursing the car and the load along, we made it to Lake Powell.

     Ed and Bill got into a bit of a contest right off.   Ed, the knot tying champion of his scout troop and his boot camp company, would tie a line off and Bill, the Annapolis graduate, would retie the line.

     The second day on Lake Powell, Krista got sick.  Ed and Susie took the ski boat and took Krista to see a doctor.  We had spent the previous day cruising around the lake in the ski boat and the gas gauge was near empty.  With a bit of sweat etc., we  made it to the dock.

     Most of the trip was great.  Good weather, etc.  Pat, always the top fisherman, got skunked, and 3-year old Krista caught the only fish of the trip with a piece of a hot dog.

     Returning to the docks, after our week, the ski boat gear shift failed, so our last remembrance of Lake Powell was swimming the ski boat from the docks to the boat landing and onto the boat trailer.  Almost froze.

     On the way home, after pulling Pat out of Las Vegas,   we had to tackle that long grade.    About half way up the car overheated and we had to leave the boat/trailer and Ed so we could replace the coolant.

     The trip was one we will always remember.  Nothing boring about this trip.  To this day Ed calls Bill Capt. Bly, and I am sure Bill thought Ed should have been keel  hauled for insubordination.

     History

     The Todd/Smith relationship goes back to the days when we were building the Apollo CSM/SM spacecraft at North American Aviation Space Division.  Both Bill and Ed worked in the Project Office.  Their relationship was casual until both moved to the Shuttle Orbiter program.  In 1979 Ed and Susie moved to Huntington Beach where Pat and Bill lived.  Susie was new to California and they were  both new to Huntington Beach.  Bill and Pat proceeded to take us in hand and integrate us into their Huntington Beach family.  We spent many evenings, with friends, in their  great apartment near the beach.  We will always remember Bill trying to pedal his cheap scotch, Scoresby, off as Chivas Regal.  When our daughter was born, Bill and Pat became Aunt and Uncle, the “Toggs”, as she would say.

     Early Christmas’s were remembered with the Todd’s at the front  door at “0 dark thirty” waiting  to see Krista’s face when she came down to see what Santa had brought.  Later both Bill and Ed retired from  Rockwell and went to work at Northrop on the B-2 program.   The Todd family expanded.  The Smith’s moved to the Sierra’s and the Todd’s moved to Nevada .  Our get togethers were limited,  but our memories of the Todd’s, our adventures,  and most of all the remembrance of the warm couple who made our lives fuller, will always be cherished

God speed Capt. Bly .

Ed and Susie Smith

Pismo Beach, CA

I was gonna go backwards with some stories, but this just happened the other day. Went for a hike. Early. On the trail before 4:00am. It's a great time to go. Dark. The trail lit by my headlamp. Quiet. No wind and the critters are sleeping. Peaceful. Not many people go hiking at 4:00am. It's a great time to be alone with your thoughts. The mind wanders. On the way down from Barney Lake, the morning starts to come alive. The sun is not yet up over the ridge, the colors of the sunrise sky remind me of rainbow sherbert. The birds are chirpping. A lone deer appears near the cutoff to Arrowhead Lake and Shayla takes off after her. I continue on down the trail. All of a sudden, it's like I'm no longer in the mountains, but on a street, walking past a building. I look up and there's Dad, leaning out the second story window, looking down on me. We both smile and nod, then he's gone. But I know, he's still here.

I will share more stories as time goes on, but for now, I'll start at the end. I'm so grateful and thankful for the last five days I got to spend with my Dad. The first, Mon. June 9th., was a little rough. Seeing one of the toughest guys I've ever known in that  condition was hard to say the least. Tuesday was better and Wednesday was awesome. He seemed like his old self again. He was joking with the OT and the PT (he was good like that with the ladies, ya know?) And he was walking the halls, with the assistance of a walker, like the 83yr old stud that he was. When I left on Friday, we shook hands, I kissed him on his forehead and told him I loved him. He said " I love you too Spike" I told him the next time I see him will be at his home having a beer together. I guess that beer will have to wait. 

1973, OakWood Garen Apartments, I met Bill Todd & Gary Clark.  We became good friends because we all liked to cook and eat.  Bill & Gary came up with the idea of inviting some of the people we had met hanging around the pool to a Sunday brunch, soon every Sunday we were rotating to someones apartment for brunch.  
Bill, Gary and I would get our kids together and go to games,movies whatever and cook dinners.

One Friday night I had an earache, Gary was asleep, Bill was on a date I walked our on the baconey and was Bill was home early & alone (bad date) I went to his apartment, he saw I had blood coming out my ear and took me to the hospital. Stayed with me got my precriptions and got me back home before Gary even new I was gone.  That was the kind of friend he was. 

Bill moved to the beach, Gary & I brought a house, but we still got together on Sundays.  We would get on the motorcycles and ride PHC and have a nice brunch, if the weather was bad, we would watch sports(had to twists Bills arm for that)cook & eat.

We moved to Mammoth, the first time I met Pat they came to Mammoth to do some fishing.  We took them on our boat to fish Crowley, Pat was in a yellow baceini bathing suite on.  We cought so many fish Bill didn't even have time to open a coor's.  The next day we got skunked.

Then we ended up at Callvill Bay, again Bill & Pat were the social people always have a party, dinner, something going on.  Christmas, what a wonder time, Bill  had so much to do he would start on Thanksgiving weekend when Rick & DeDe would come over and try to get up all the Christmas lights at Callville.  They won the award each year.  When they moved they took Christmas with them,nobody decorates anymore.


God gave us a wonder friend when we met at OakWood Gardens. 

           

     My first real time spent with Bill’s daughter, Linda, and her husband, Mark, was in 1984 on a houseboating trip on Lake Powell paid for and organized by Bill and Pat.  The passengers included the 6 of us, plus 1-7/9ths other tiny humans.  Mark and Linda’s son, Eric, would learn to walk while on a moving houseboat.  That explains his superior soccer moves, excluding one that cost him a fractured tibia, but that’s another story.  Our daughter, Kira, was still cooking inside Diana, and would be born 2 months after the trip, hence the 7/9ths of a passenger. 

     For my part I had never been on a houseboat.  I’ve never been overly fond of lakes.  They have creepy things on their bottoms that are waiting to reach up and grab you and pull you under.  I’ve seen The Creature From the Black Lagoon!  Proof.  And ask me about the dead trees on the bottom of this super creepy lake in Canada.  I digress.  I was raised as a sailor and knew little about power boats, or what my dad calls putt-putts.  And I had learned to ski in the purer sport in which you slide down steep mountains on frozen water.  None of this flat soft liquid stuff.

As such there were many lessons to be learned on that trip, either directly or indirectly due to Bill.  For example, it rains almost every night in the desert in August, whether you are sleeping on the roof of a houseboat or not.  It is always hot even when the sun is not out.  Rats and mice will climb aboard if you forget to put funnels on the landing lines.  A diaper taped with duct tape around your shin can protect it from the rather painful spray while single skiing.  Single skiing is harder than double, but I learned to do both on this trip.  Bats like the inside of houseboats at night when the doors are opened.  Tricia hates bats in her houseboat at night whether the doors are opened or not.  A screen from a window can be used in an emergency to shoo bats out of a houseboat at night when the doors are opened.  Oh, oh.  I remember another.  When you are in a harbor piloting a houseboat near the fuel dock and the other boaters crowding that dock clearly don’t know a gunwale from a forecastle, a sheet from a halyard, or even port from starboard, that you should swear at them as loud possible.  Fun times.   

     But there were more important lessons learned from this trip with Bill.  For example.  Despite all the fun they may have, women in their 8th month of pregnancy don’t seem to like 120 degree days and 100 degree nights.  They also are not overly fond of Braxton-hicks contractions 20 miles from the nearest harbor, on a little houseboat, in your own arm of Lake Powell, with no one around you other than a bunch of people clearly not trained to deliver a premature baby, and quite literally in the middle of nowhere.  But don’t worry.  They were only training contractions.  No baby yet. 

     But when I look back and remember this trip of trips, my one and only houseboating experience, a trip that would not have happened had Bill not entered my life, there is one lesson that I learned from Bill above all others.  If you go houseboating on Lake Powell in August with a pregnant wife and you want to sleep at all, stay dry at night by sleeping inside, keep the doors closed and therefore prevent bats from getting inside, make sure the boat has air conditioning:-)